1. Field of Invention
This invention is directed to obtaining, from a remote location, information about a product, and, more particularly, to electronically obtaining, from a remote location, topic-specific information regarding a product.
2. Description of Related Art
When an Internet user uses the Internet to obtain information regarding a particular topic, usually the user wants to retrieve only the specific information which pertains to the given topic. Moreover, the user wants to obtain that information quickly.
Unfortunately, however, a user may not know the Uniform Resource Locator (“URL”) which would lead to the desired information. Accordingly, a user may attempt to search for the URL using a search engine. In further detail, the user lists several key words and hopes that the search engine will return the desired URL. However, the search engine typically returns many “hits”, in the form of URLs, which may or may not include the specific URL leading to the desired subject matter. In this situation, a user must take the time to sift through the irrelevant hits, all the while hoping to stumble across the desired URL and information.
At other times, a user may have the needed URL, but it may not be “handy”. For example, the URL may be in a piece of product literature which has been filed away or misplaced. In such instances, the user must take the time to hunt down the product literature.
Even if an Internet user is fortunate enough to know the specific URL, the user knows that it takes time to key in the characters which make up the URL. Also, if the user makes a mistake while typing, the user may have to rekey the information, thereby further slowing down the process. Accordingly, given the typical Internet user's desire for quick data retrieval, the user would just as soon avoid having to enter a URL, altogether.
In an effort to address Internet users' desire for quick data retrieval, a system has been developed in which an Internet user may electronically scan a Uniform Product Code (“UPC”) symbol into a local computer using a bar-code reader. The local computer then uses a modem and telephone link to send the bar-code data to an Internet service provider. The Internet service provider then accesses a relational database which lists several UPCs and several URLs, with a given UPC being associated with a single URL if the database has a URL for the given UPC. If the database has a URL which corresponds with the UPC provided by the user, the Internet service provider uses the telephone/modem link with the local computer to send the URL to the local computer in the form of a hypertext mark-up language (“HTML”) document. This HTML document is displayed on the local computer, at which point the user may click on the URL, thereby triggering the local computer's Internet browser software to navigate to the information resource located at the particular URL. Alternatively, the local computer's browser software may automatically load the retrieved URL, ultimately displaying the information corresponding to that URL.
In an alternate form of the system discussed above, the particular URL which is associated with a given UPC is, itself, encoded in bar-code form using bar-code technology. The URL bar-code is printed on an item other than the product itself. In further detail, the URL bar-code is printed on a document which may be a magazine article, an advertisement, or other printed matter. If an Internet user has access to the particular document, then the user may scan the URL bar-code using a bar-code reader connected to the user's local computer. At this point, the URL bar-code data is transmitted via the modem/telephone link to the Internet service provider, at which point the service provider uses the encoded URL to navigate to the remote server and file identified by the URL. This information is then returned to the local computer as described above.
These systems provide one solution for an Internet user, in that the user does not have to key in a URL. However, these systems still do not address a user's desire to obtain just the relevant information and to obtain it quickly. In further detail, whether a user scans a UPC bar-code or a URL bar-code, the user still retrieves an information resource which is quite broad. The information resource may relate to the product, or it may not. For example, the retrieved information resource may simply be a website which presents the user with information regarding the company which manufactures the particular product. Even if the information resource is limited to information regarding the product, the user does not know what kinds of information about the product will be presented. It may be that the desired information is not even included in the information resource. In any event, in order to determine whether or not the particular, desired item of information has been retrieved, the user must parse through all of the information retrieved.
Accordingly, Internet users would benefit from a code-reading system for a given product which not only retrieves information quickly, but which also retrieves the desired information, and which retrieves the desired information without retrieving potentially-related, yet unwanted information.